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From: General Schvantzkoph on 14 Jan 2010 23:00
On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:22:40 +0000, Jim Cochrane wrote:

> On 2010-01-14, General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:49:25 +0000, Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-01-13, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>>> ...
>>
>> You can put 16G in a Core2 box but it's still expensive although the
>> premium for 4G DIMMs seems to have disappeared. Unfortunately the
>> reason that the premium has disappeared is because 2G DIMMs have gotten
>> more expensive, not because 4G DIMMs have become less expensive.
>
> Hmm, I wonder why both 2G and 4G prices are so high right now. I would
> have thought that with the recession there'd be lower demand and the
> price would go down. But the world economy is pretty complex and
> chaotic right now, so the cause-effect process is probably not that
> simple. And, perhaps these chips are expensive because they're not
> being manufactored in very large quantities because of the low demand.
> Is there a known explanation on the high memory prices?
>
> Anyway, if 2G and 4G are both expensive, I might as well get the 4G.
>
>
> Thanks.
> Jim

It's Microsoft's fault. The Vista disaster depressed the demand for RAM
for the last few years because XP can't handle more then 3G and the three
copies of Vista that Microsoft sold were also 32 bit because there was a
dearth of 64 bit drivers. As a result the RAM manufacturers have been
hemorrhaging money so they couldn't invest in new capacity. Now that
Microsoft has finally released a viable 64 bit OS there has been a spike
in demand which has resulted in a shortage. The result is that RAM has
nearly doubled in price in the last few months. My guess is that it will
take a year before prices drop again.
From: David Brown on 15 Jan 2010 03:30
Jim Cochrane wrote:
> On 2010-01-14, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>> On 2010-01-13, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>>> After not having bought a new computer system for 5 or more years, I'm now
>>>>> ...
>>>> Out of curiosity, how do you find Linux software for music composition
>>>> and production compared to things like Cubase on windows? I don't know
>>>> much about this sort of stuff myself, but I have a friend who is a
>>>> professional composer and musician that makes heavy use of Cubase and
>>>> other windows music software.
>>> I've not really used Cubase or other similar software since I don't use
>>> Windows, but I find rosegarden to be pretty good - workable for me, at
>>> this point. I'm sure there are things Cubase can do that RG cannot, but
>>> I think there are also things RG can do that Cubase cannot.
>>>
>> Fair enough.
>>
>> Can I ask another related question while we are at it? My soon-to-be 13
>> year old has a Yamaha electric keyboard (not a professional-level
>> system, but not a toy either - a solid hobby level) and I've recently
>> got a USB-to-midi cable with a view to connecting it to my Ubuntu laptop
>> and trying out Rosegarden. Is Rosegarden easy enough to get started
>> with for a musical amateur (I've got no problem with computer side of
>> things)? Have you suggestions for other Linux software that could be
>> fun to try out with this system, such as a simple sequencer or recorder,
>> or a drum machine? I'll wander around the net myself, but it does no
>> harm to have a pointer or two as to where to look!
>
> I think that if you can get Rosegarden installed and working for your
> son (Getting it working can be a little tricky, especially when the
> sounds come from your computer via software synthesizers; but since your
> son would use the Yamaha as an external source [I'm assuming], it will
> probably not be difficult to get it working.) and if you're there to
> help him with it if he needs help, he should find it relatively easy to
> use. He may even be able to get pretty far with it without any help -
> He will have to spend some time with it up front (not a lot, I'd say) to
> get used to how it works and how it expects the user to use it. But on
> the whole it's pretty intuitive, and quite fun when you get the hang of
> it. Since it is quite powerful, it would probably take a lot of effort to
> learn how to take advantage of a lot of its powerful features, but IMO you
> can do a lot with it even if you don't expend this effort.
>
> I think the beta version of the QT4 port is probably stable enough to
> use for a regular user, but if you try it out and run into problems, you
> can try 1.7.3, the latest pre-port version. Their online documentation
> is pretty good, and the mailing list tends to be pretty helpful.
> (Suggestion, search the list first for posts about the same
> problem/issue before posting yourself.)
>
> As far as other systems, I don't know a lot, but I keep hearing about
> Hydrogen (drum machine software) and it seems that a lot of people like
> it a lot. (E.g.: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7846) I've seen
> several posts to the rosegarden mailing list about people using Hydrogen
> and rosegarden.
>
> As far as other sequencers and related software, I don't know enough to
> recommend anything else, but here are some resources that could help you
> get an idea of what might provide what you need. This article:
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7912, although rather old, still
> gives some good descriptions of linux sequencers and I think most or all
> of them are still available. Also, check out these two:
> http://www.linux-sound.org/
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/MIDI-HOWTO-8.html
>
> Good luck!

Thanks for these pointers - I've taken a copy of this post to look at
the links later on. I'm fairly confident of getting the program
installed and connected to the Yamaha - that's the easy bit. What I was
wondering was whether I and my son would be able to figure out what to
do with the program once it is running, as neither of us have any
experience with this sort of thing - but it sounds like it should be
easy enough to get started.

Thanks,

David



From: Jim Cochrane on 22 Jan 2010 20:09
On 2010-01-15, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>> On 2010-01-14, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>> On 2010-01-13, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>>>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>>>> After not having bought a new computer system for 5 or more years, I'm now
>>>>>> ...
>>>>> ...
>>>
>>> Can I ask another related question while we are at it? My soon-to-be 13
>>> year old has a Yamaha electric keyboard (not a professional-level
>>> system, but not a toy either - a solid hobby level) and I've recently
>>> got a USB-to-midi cable with a view to connecting it to my Ubuntu laptop
>>> and trying out Rosegarden. Is Rosegarden easy enough to get started
>>> with for a musical amateur (I've got no problem with computer side of
>>> things)? Have you suggestions for other Linux software that could be
>>> fun to try out with this system, such as a simple sequencer or recorder,
>>> or a drum machine? I'll wander around the net myself, but it does no
>>> harm to have a pointer or two as to where to look!
>>
>> I think that if you can get Rosegarden installed and working for your
>> son (Getting it working can be a little tricky, especially when the
>> sounds come from your computer via software synthesizers; but since your
>> son would use the Yamaha as an external source [I'm assuming], it will
>> probably not be difficult to get it working.) and if you're there to
>> help him with it if he needs help, he should find it relatively easy to
>> use. He may even be able to get pretty far with it without any help -
>> ...
>
> Thanks for these pointers - I've taken a copy of this post to look at
> the links later on. I'm fairly confident of getting the program
> installed and connected to the Yamaha - that's the easy bit. What I was
> wondering was whether I and my son would be able to figure out what to
> do with the program once it is running, as neither of us have any
> experience with this sort of thing - but it sounds like it should be
> easy enough to get started.
>

Hi David. Sorry for the late response. I went out of town for a few
days - got back Tuesday night and then got sidetracked.

Since you'll be configuring Rosegarden for him, I suspect that after a
short period of learning how it works (not more than a couple hours, I
suspect) your son will have no problem using Rosegarden to record,
play back, record on top of what you've already recorded, use the music
notation editor to change you he's recorded, and perform several other
basic functions. I think he'll find it quite fun to use.

If you have time, would you mind posting here to let me know how it
turns out? (Or if you prefer to send me an email, let me know and I'll
find a way to get my email address to you without broadcasting it to the
spammers. Or post this to the Rosegarden mailing list - I'm sure others
on the list will be interested to hear how this turns out.)


Jim

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news(a)netfront.net ---
From: Danno on 22 Jan 2010 22:58
Jim Cochrane wrote:
<snip>
>
> After not having bought a new computer system for 5 or more years, I'm now
> trying to figure out what kind of new system will best fit my needs. Any
> advice on this will be greatly appreciated - and hopefully others will
> also learn some useful things from the resulting threads.

<snip>

> - At least 24GB memory capacity. (Will probably start out with 12GB.)

I believe the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME can help you out in the motherboard
department, if you can find the RAM to populate it. Even 12G is a lot of
RAM, and really, SATA II throughput is pretty fast. Now, I am not even
vaguely familiar with the needs of multichannel lossless audio playback,
but in my mind twenty 1500Kbps tracks need about 30Mbps throughput. I
believe the (fairly common) SATA II spec is capped at 3000Mbps, but even a
good SSD has trouble exceeding the SATA I spec of 1.5Gbps (1500Mbps,
1500000 KBps). Again, I'm only use a raw example here, but it seems to me
that a new SATA II drive might accommodate for a huge amount of RAM for
your circumstance - read-only playback, correct? I believe SSDs have the
fastest persistent read rates, these days. FWIW, the SATA III spec bumps
throughput to 6 Gbps, but noone comes close to saturating SATA II yet, not
sure if SATA III is available on anything.

<snip>
> - What are the advantages and disadvantages of core i7 compared to core
> 2
> quad (and whatever other modern Intel options within my price range
> are available)?
>

In a nutshell, Corei7-920 or better will get you the consumer bleeding
edge of the moment. Intel's Core variants come in several flavours, so be
aware of what you're looking at - all "CoreiX" are not interchangeable.
Core i7 or better have 4 physical cores, with new hyperthreading logic (not
the old P4 stuff), which yields 8 logical cores. They have the new SSE4.1
(or 4.2) instruction set, they can use triple channel RAM, they have
a "turbo" mode dynamically bumps up the processor speed when temperature
and voltage will allow it. I know when I'm doing fairly mathematically
intense stuff, my previous CPU was a dual-core Opteron, and what took 3
days on that takes 7 hours on this. If you software is thread-aware,
multi-core is the way to go.
Personally, I bought into the bottom end of the 1366 socket (Corei7 920)
because I am hoping to upgrade 5 or 6 years from now, am betting that Intel
is going to stick with this socket for at least that long. Future-proofing
really is a gamble though.

> - What are the pros and cons of using a video card (such as Intel) with
> an open-source driver versus a card with a closed-source driver
> (nvidia, of course)? Keep in mind, of course, that I need good,
> but not game-level, video performance. (This is probably a can of
> worms - and long threads - but I have to ask it.) (E.g., is the
> nouveau driver for nvidia likely to be good enough or will I need
> the proprietary driver?)
>

I only know a little about the General Purpose GPU (GPGPU), but a lot of
new "supercomputers" are starting to employ video cards to offload their
calculations. I think it's something that hasn't been fully embraced by the
industry at large yet, but (for instance) some cards can also be used as a
physics card for video games. If you have grand intentions of
revolutionizing the audio industry (or if you see it already happening),
and see a use for high-end number crunching, a card and API capable of
using the GPGPU might be worthwhile. Otherwise (as stated in another
thread), I kinda doubt video will be much of a concern, virtually any
discrete card capable of filling your monitor will probably cut the
mustard. I would stay away from integrated video; if the integrated card
shares RAM with the system, it'll be a terrible bottleneck between the RAM
and the CPU - get a separate, cheap card.

<snip>
>
> (BTW, I already have a sound card - Echo MiaMIDI - I will use.)
>
A very quick Google search does not show a lot of positives about Echo
cards & recent Linux. The GNU/Linux world has moved to ALSA for sound
control, and the impression I've got is that the Echo cards have not been
brought along. I recall seeing support under OSS when I rebuilt kernels
years ago, but you may want to check your distro of choice regarding their
use, also maybe see if your software supports both OSS and ALSA.

> Thanks!

Sure, happy spending. WOOHOO new computer!


--
Slackware 12.2, 2.6.27.7, Core i7 920, GeForce 8400 GS
RLU #272755
From: David Brown on 25 Jan 2010 04:59
On 23/01/2010 02:09, Jim Cochrane wrote:
> On 2010-01-15, David Brown<david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>> On 2010-01-14, David Brown<david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>>> On 2010-01-13, David Brown<david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Jim Cochrane wrote:
>>>>>>> After not having bought a new computer system for 5 or more years, I'm now
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> Can I ask another related question while we are at it? My soon-to-be 13
>>>> year old has a Yamaha electric keyboard (not a professional-level
>>>> system, but not a toy either - a solid hobby level) and I've recently
>>>> got a USB-to-midi cable with a view to connecting it to my Ubuntu laptop
>>>> and trying out Rosegarden. Is Rosegarden easy enough to get started
>>>> with for a musical amateur (I've got no problem with computer side of
>>>> things)? Have you suggestions for other Linux software that could be
>>>> fun to try out with this system, such as a simple sequencer or recorder,
>>>> or a drum machine? I'll wander around the net myself, but it does no
>>>> harm to have a pointer or two as to where to look!
>>>
>>> I think that if you can get Rosegarden installed and working for your
>>> son (Getting it working can be a little tricky, especially when the
>>> sounds come from your computer via software synthesizers; but since your
>>> son would use the Yamaha as an external source [I'm assuming], it will
>>> probably not be difficult to get it working.) and if you're there to
>>> help him with it if he needs help, he should find it relatively easy to
>>> use. He may even be able to get pretty far with it without any help -
>>> ...
>>
>> Thanks for these pointers - I've taken a copy of this post to look at
>> the links later on. I'm fairly confident of getting the program
>> installed and connected to the Yamaha - that's the easy bit. What I was
>> wondering was whether I and my son would be able to figure out what to
>> do with the program once it is running, as neither of us have any
>> experience with this sort of thing - but it sounds like it should be
>> easy enough to get started.
>>
>
> Hi David. Sorry for the late response. I went out of town for a few
> days - got back Tuesday night and then got sidetracked.
>
> Since you'll be configuring Rosegarden for him, I suspect that after a
> short period of learning how it works (not more than a couple hours, I
> suspect) your son will have no problem using Rosegarden to record,
> play back, record on top of what you've already recorded, use the music
> notation editor to change you he's recorded, and perform several other
> basic functions. I think he'll find it quite fun to use.
>
> If you have time, would you mind posting here to let me know how it
> turns out? (Or if you prefer to send me an email, let me know and I'll
> find a way to get my email address to you without broadcasting it to the
> spammers. Or post this to the Rosegarden mailing list - I'm sure others
> on the list will be interested to hear how this turns out.)
>

He'll be getting his own laptop in the near future, and we'll try out
Rosegarden with that. It won't be the first thing to get running, so it
will be some time before we get started, but I will try to give you some
feedback.

mvh.,

David


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